AFTER TWENTY YEARS

The queen, hearing the voices of the king and his nobles, came into the banquet hall. “May the king live forever!” she said. “Don’t be alarmed! Don’t look so pale! There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods.” —Daniel 5:10, 11

Historians believe that Belshazzar reigned for as many as seventeen years before the defeat of Babylon in 539 B.C. In the early part of Belshazzar’s reign, Daniel received the visions recorded in Daniel 7 and 8, but it had been many years since he had interacted with Nebuchadnezzar, as recorded in Daniel 2 and 4. But his special insight and his reliance on God was remembered by the Queen Mother, perhaps twenty years later.

Often, people notice our faithfulness whether we realize it or not. And it can matter to people in unexpected ways. As a writer who writes mainly for church publications, I am sometimes surprised when someone who may not have had a connection with the church for many years notices and responds to an article I have written—and that it matters to them. It is the same with those around us, who might be curious about what it means to live a life of faith or who might take some comfort in the fact that they know someone who believes or who might pray for them. When Belshazzar was confronted by that startling vision, the Queen Mother immediately remembered Daniel and his faithfulness. It was her foundation for urging the officials not to be afraid but to seek wisdom and guidance from Daniel as a man “who has the spirit of the holy gods in him”—a phrase she may have borrowed from Nebuchadnezzar (see Daniel 4:8). She probably did not fully understand Daniel’s relationship with God, but she found comfort in the insight and wisdom it gave him. And she was prepared to offer that to her son.